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Electronic Arts is gearing up to release its newest installment of The Sims with The SIMS 3
Let’s take a few minutes to recap the big changes and offer a take on whether we think these are good moves -- and what possible pitfalls we foresee.
The whole neighborhood simulates at once
In The Sims 3, you still control only a single household at a time, but your neighbors advance, change, get new jobs, develop relationships, and otherwise advance alongside you -- whether you're paying attention or not. A downtown area with places to eat, shop, and work (think: bookstore, park, clothing store, movie theater, bistro) offers a central hub for socialization, though at launch some buildings may be little more than facades. Sims may be able to enter a clothing store, for example, but players won't be able to follow -- that's one possible area for growth in the inevitable expansion packs.
Plusses: Allowing your Sims meaningful interaction outside of their terrarium throws some welcome chaos into what used to be a closed, controlled system. Running into an ex-husband at the movie theater with his new wife -- that's definitely something new and different and way more "human." We're also psyched for the ant-farm aspect: catching the A.I. inhabitants doing strange and unexpected things during your Sims' day-to-day downtime.
Possible Pitfalls: If a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around, does it make a sound? Or -- if you don't catch my drift -- if an A.I. Sim gardener falls in love with the A.I. pizza delivery boy and sets up a picnic outside the science lab, does it even matter if I don't see it happening? Keep in mind that the cost of such complexity will no doubt be incurred in system requirements. There's a reason they haven't done this before. But don’t worry if your armed with an M-Tech Extreme Gaming system you won’t even notice any performance hit.
Bye-bye bladder bar!
The eight traditional motive bars governing bladder, hunger, and other needs are gone and have been condensed to a few (the most important being "stress versus fun"), but that doesn't mean you don't have to go to the bathroom. Instead, a Sim that needs to pee will suddenly have a "debuff" icon (dubbed a "moodlet" by The Sims 3 makers) appear over his portrait -- reducing that Sim's mood until it's addressed. Likewise, events such as a first kiss or a job promotion can trigger moodlet buffs with lasting results.
Plusses: More time to focus on careers, relationships, or being creative right from the get-go. Less time obsessively compulsively picking up dirty dishes to top off a comfort bar -- and then realizing it's time for bed. Also, less emphasis on the acquisition of objects simply because they make a certain bar fill up faster. Plus, players can now manipulate their Sims' environment directly -- breaking the fourth wall to pick up garbage for them, for example.
Potential Pitfalls: Oversimplified Sims: While Humble and his team say they're making a concerted effort to bring back the "game" aspect of The Sims, role-playing game players crave stats and often don't appreciate when too much is hidden behind the curtain.
Trait-based character generation
Aside from way more flexibility in the options that determine how your Sim looks (The Sims 3 offers separate wide-ranging sliders for both musculature and body fat, so you can make tons of different body types), every adult Sim now has five distinct Traits that define their personality -- descriptors like Outdoorsperson, Jock, Paranoid, or Kleptomaniac chosen from a pool of approximately 80. These replace the messy/neat, active/lazy, and other personality sliders to dictate interpersonal relationships.
Plusses: We couldn't resist an opportunity to apply high school-level math. If there are 80 traits, then there are 24,040,016 possible permutations (though this doesn't take into account that some Traits, such as Good and Evil, are mutually exclusive) of Sim types, from perfectly productive to just plain insane. We wouldn't be surprised to see a whole expansion pack dedicated entirely to new Traits somewhere down the line. Loves Dogs? Only Turns Left? Dances at Inappropriate Times? Cries When Eating? The possibilities are almost endless.
Potential Pitfalls: What if five Traits aren't enough to make a Sim seem "human"? A personality quirk like Kleptomaniac sounds fun, but it could end up dominating a Sim's life.
Item customization
For the home-design-oriented players, The Sims 3 offers increased flexibility to make your own patterns (for complex plaids and paisleys, you can have the computer do the color-matching for you) coupled with the ability to apply them to clothing, hair, or any surface of a piece of furniture, from upholstery to the visible supporting framework. Furniture can be laid out at angles, too.
Plusses: Ain't nothing wrong with more options...and The Sims 3 executive producer Ben Bell says the aim is to make it so that players don't have to have a digital arts degree to make their own stuff.
Potential Pitfalls: Sharing content is a huge, huge, huge deal to Sims players -- and to be honest, we were a bit surprised to find it's not as huge a part of The Sims 3's initial blueprint as we would have guessed. EA's plans definitely involve an online item exchange and a way to sort the good from the bad with a rating system (sort of like YouTube), but beyond that, it's nebulous. High-concept ideas like content pollination and podcast-like subscription (so players can, say, constantly receive new clothing designs from favorite Sims 3 creators) is being left to Spore.
Exploring your options
Say goodbye to The Sims 2's Wants and Fears system: Instead, Sims have Dreams -- which could be as simple as desiring a new pair of shoes as you pass by a clothing store or as complex as wanting to become an astronaut after seeing a shooting star. It's totally up to you whether you want to let the Dream fade unfulfilled (with no penalty) or turn it into a Promise -- with a capital P -- to pursue, with positive consequences if fulfilled and negative repercussions if ignored. Opt-in gameplay extends to work and play, too: Sims can set "work tones" to choose whether to get ahead in their career by actually working hard or by sleeping with the boss. Romance is an option, too, rather than the inevitable outcome of multiple conversations, as The Sims 3 lets you choose when if you want to be a flirt rather than just a being a friend.
Plusses: Humble's team feels that The Sims 2's Wants and Fears system was too dictatorial. Fair enough. I personally like the Wants half of the equations, but I'm totally fine with the Fears being gone -- those are arbitrary and annoying, and I welcome a system that's more flexible than The Sims 2's, which lets lifelong ambitions as "wants to be rich" or "wants to have a big family" dominate lives a bit too much.
Potential Pitfalls: "Optional" gameplay is tough -- and while asking players to make their own fun is a big part of The Sims' appeal, this might alienate those who are hoping for more concrete direction from their games. Also, how significant can rewards be if you're telling players "don't worry about it if you don't want to take the risk"?
Be sure to check out The Sims 3 this summer.
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